1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium storing a design support program, a design support method, and a design support apparatus, in which design information considering a range of similarity is provided.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of design/manufacturing, a designer uses 3D (Dimension)-CAD to design components of a machine and the like. First, the designer describes skills and know-how in design such as faults that occurred due to shapes in a processing stage, inspection stage, assembly stage, usage stage and the like after designing, measures taken against such faults, and problems in manufacturing costs in text or the like as design information. Then, such design information is stored by associating with 3D data designed by 3D-CAD.
To design a new component or the like, the designer searches for components designed/manufactured in the past that are similar in shape to the component to be designed and checks up design information thereof. So, compared with a case in which problems are detected after designing, it is desired to reduce design changes by detecting problems of design in the design stage, thereby reducing design/manufacturing costs.
Here, a method of reducing labor of the designer required to check up associated design information by using newly designed 3D data as a search key, searching for 3D data having similar shapes, and extracting design information associated with 3D data of such a search result from a database has been known. For example, a method of calculating the degree of similarity between 3D data based on a ratio of the volume overlapped when two pieces of 3D data to be compared are superposed on each other has been known (e.g. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-307099). Also, a method of calculating the degree of similarity between 3D data based on the degree of similarity of analysis trees after constructing such analysis trees based on each surface obtained by dividing the surface of 3D data and geometrical adjacency of each surface has been known (e.g. Japanese Patent No. 3513562). Also, a method of calculating the degree of similarity between 3D data by extracting polygon information from 3D data and comparing information of each polygon when it is divided into a certain size or less as features of the 3D data has been known (e.g. Japanese Patent No. 3614761).
Incidentally, design information includes such design information having content regarding a partial (local) shape. For example, some types of design information have content regarding an overall shape such as “Strength falls as the overall aspect ratio increases” and other types of design information have content regarding a partial (local) shape such as “Processing costs are high if the screw hole is small”.
However, such a “range of similarities” is not considered in the conventional technology. On the other hand, the designer thinks that he (she) wants to check up design information regarding an overall shape together or design information regarding a partial shape together. Thus, in the conventional technology, the designer must systematically arrange obtained search results in design information regarding an overall shape, design information regarding a partial shape, and design information regarding an intermediate range thereof, creating a problem of work load thereof.